(The Stars Were Brightly Shining)
by adlyb
Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.
Summary: After a one night stand with Klaus, Elena discovers she's not going to be alone for Christmas after all.
Spoilers: Seasons 3 & 4
Rating: R
Warnings: canon typical violence/ teen pregnancy / angst angst angst and Christmas
Klaus's face twists with black rage. He doesn't even turn to acknowledge Damon as he skewers Elena with the blade of his suspicion. "So they're back." The words are venom from his lips.
"Missed us?" Damon taunts.
Her heart pounds in her ears. Adrenaline spikes through her. She can hardly think, hardly stand under the drum of danger danger danger booming through her entire body.
Klaus has all of her focus. She can spare absolutely nothing for Damon and Stefan. Not right now. Not like this.
Klaus notices. Pieces together what that must mean.
"You're not surprised," he realizes. "You already knew."
"Since yesterday," she confirms, because what else can she do?
"Yesterday," he repeats, his voice a dangerously soft rasp. "Precisely when you started getting cold feet."
Damning accusation glitters in Klaus's eyes as he stares her down— eyes that gleam an unnatural, phosphorous shade of yellow as he appraises her with predatory intent.
She doesn't dare look away.
A snarl rips from his throat. "I understand now. You've chosen them over me." The doorframe snaps apart as his hands curl into claws around the wood. The whole frame collapses, raining debris.
Elena has to dodge back lest it strike her.
"Back off, Klaus," Stefan warns.
Klaus ignores him, all of his attention fixated on her. "Let's see how you like this choice," he says, a hideous smile stretching across his face.
He moves so fast he literally disappears from her porch and reappears at the car. In an instant he has both Salvatores by the throat, has wrenched all three of them around to face her. That stomach-clenching rictus of a grin is still plastered onto Klaus's face as he regards her with an ancient and profound intensity that makes the air itself seem to throb around her.
"As a special consideration from me to you, dear heart, you get to decide which of your beloveds I end right here, right now," Klaus calls to her, dragging the Salvatores up to the bottom of the porch, "and which of them gets to limp away. I'll even let you keep the heart of whichever one you choose to die. That's what you've always wanted, yes? To capture their hearts?"
A flash of movement flickers at the corner of her eye.
Damon, his hand wrapped around a lethal white oak stake, twists against Klaus's hold. Ready to plunge it into Klaus's heart, the potential consequences be damned.
She screams. Tries to throw herself through the door, consequences be damned, but Bonnie appears out of nowhere and wrenches her back. At the same time, Bonnie flings an arm up and hurls the three vampires apart.
Everything is a blur of violence after that. Her eyes sting, trying to process what she sees—Damon rolling to his feet, stake in hand, charging Klaus—Klaus turning the stake an inch from his heart, only for Stefan to grab and twist his arm until it snaps—and Klaus to throw them both off of him—the stake goes flying. All the while, Elena fights to break free from Bonnie.
If she could get down there, she could end this—
"You're playing into his hands," Bonnie yells.
"Did you call them?" she demands. "Are they here because of you?"
Is that why he's in danger?
She's not even sure who she means.
"What else was I supposed to do?"
The brawl outside settles into an abrupt stand-off.
Klaus grips Damon by the jaw with one hand while the other pins his arms behind his back. One quick jerk, and he could take Damon's head off like this. The only thing that stops him is Stefan, who'd gotten ahold of that deadly stake in the midst of all the chaos, poised to strike Klaus down the instant he moves.
Damon claws at Klaus's arms, his feet scrabbling at the ground.
How easily Klaus overpowers him.
She's never quite understood the difference between Klaus and a regular vampire until just now. Never quite understood how he looms over the rest of his kind.
For her, a mere human, there's not a great deal of difference between a bull shark and a great white. Both would be equally lethal should she be caught in their jaws.
Klaus flashes Stefan a mouthful of fangs— that same cruel, taunting facsimile of a smile he had thrown at her moments before. That Klaus feels the need to arm himself with smiles while perpetrating such grisly acts breaks her heart, even now.
Especially now, because she knows him. Recognizes herself in him.
How easily that could be her, bestowing Katherine's crocodile smile.
"Now, Stefan, relinquish the stake to me," he commands with utter authority.
Stefan laughs in his face.
"Perhaps this is a good time for the three of us to unequivocally get on the same page," Klaus informs them, pitilessly at ease in the face of Damon's frenzied struggling. He's always at ease when he surrenders to his bloodlust. It's such an effective vent for him. "I created your vampire bloodline. You use that stake on me, you'll both be dead within the hour. Along with sweet Caroline, and Tyler and…" He cuts a calculating glance over to where Bonnie grips Elena's shoulders. "Oh yes. Abby, was it? Your former witch of a mother? I hear it's not a pretty death."
"If you kill my brother, what makes you think I'll care enough to stay my hand?" Stefan retorts.
Elena rubs at her temples. "Klaus, killing Damon isn't going to persuade me to take one step outside of this house, and it's not going to persuade Stefan to give you the stake."
"But it will improve my mood considerably."
"I won't forgive you for it. Not ever."
"You will. You always do." He pauses. Makes a show of letting Damon slip free. "Come out now, though, and we can forget about all this."
Damon shoves himself to his feet, his hackles raised like a spitting cat's as he silently demands the stake back from Stefan, only for Stefan to push him away.
Elena shakes her head. "No. I haven't made any decisions."
"No? I can easily thin your options, hasten the process for you…"
"See, this is the problem," she snaps. "Your immediate response to seeing Stefan and Damon again is only proving why I was right to run from you."
"Need I remind you that time is short? My mother's eyes are upon on you. She shan't waste long before she sets her next trap."
"Then we'll deal with that when it comes," Bonnie asserts.
"What does Esther want with Elena?" Stefan asks, weary and wary.
No one answers him.
"You can't play roulette with your safety," Klaus insists, prowling up to the ruin of the front threshold so he can gaze directly into her eyes. "I won't let you."
"It's not roulette when I have my friends to back me up."
Bonnie's hand clenches around her shoulder. "She's right." She raises her chin. "If anything, Elena's betting on the house. And the house always wins."
Klaus's eyes narrow to slits as he sizes Bonnie up. "Charming. Yet your track record fails to inspire confidence."
In the background, the Salvatores are still covertly arguing over the stake.
They're still mid-row when Klaus yanks Damon back into his clutches. "Surrender now, Elena, or I relieve Damon of his heart."
She locks eyes with Damon.
Slowly, he shakes his head. Because he doesn't want her to throw her life away. Even now.
Not unless it's on her own terms.
She shakes Bonnie off of her, and takes a huge step forward. Hope blazes in Klaus's eyes as she lingers at the edge of the doorway.
"You can't win me with threats, Klaus. If you hurt Damon, I'll never be yours."
"Never is a long time."
"I know."
She stares him down, willing him to believe her.
Willing him to believe—
He curses savagely and viciously breaks Damon's neck.
He steps over Damon's body the instant it hits the ground and stalks back up the porch. "I don't care if you'll have me or not. You're coming out."
Behind him, Stefan hoists Damon's limp body into a fireman's carry and darts with him around to the back of the house. Distantly, she registers the sound of the back door opening as Stefan slips inside.
Bonnie shifts from foot to foot beside her.
"Go," Elena murmurs. "I've got this."
Bonnie hurries to the back of the house.
Elena turns back to the nightmare hovering in her doorway. "What are you going to do? Burn me out?"
"If I must."
"I'm stubborn enough to stay and you know it. If you really care about me, you wouldn't risk me."
"Care," he sneers. "I'm in love with you and you know it. At least do me the dignity of not diminishing my feelings for you."
"But all you do is diminish my feelings."
"What can I do then to encourage your affections?"
"You already have my affections."
"Yet that is not good enough." He pauses. "How can I set things back to the way they were between us when we were at the lake house?"
Elena leans hard against the cool expanse of wall by the door. "That wasn't real. That's not what our lives are really like."
"Why not? I see no reason why that couldn't be real. More real. Now we know the child is ours. Our flesh, our blood." He hovers his hand over the invisible wall between them. "What could be more real than that?"
"I need time."
"Time."
"To think things through. To wrap my hands around this."
"To see if the Salvatores will still take you even though you are spoiled goods."
She clenches her jaw. "Can you cut the jealousy crap out, please?"
"Your former lovers show their faces and immediately you demonstrate a troubling reticence—"
"I've always been reticent with you—"
"Two days ago you threw yourself as a shield in front of me and last night you staked me in the heart. What ought I to think?"
She is so, so tired. Right in this moment, she wants nothing more than to lie down on the floor, filthy as it is with debris from the doorframe, and sleep until this is all over. Maybe, if she just curls up into a little ball, then the world will pass her by and when she wakes up all will be peaceful and quiet and blessedly, blessedly dull.
"I need time to sort out my feelings for you," she says. "Nothing you can do can change that."
He growls. "How will time help if you do not know the answer already?"
"I don't know," she tells him somewhat helplessly.
(Her heart: the one thing she has ever truly been helpless against.)
"Then it seems we are at an impasse."
He watches her for a long, weighted moment.
She doesn't break eye contact as she shoves the door shut in his face.
A/N: This is hot off the press because if I didn't publish it now I wouldn't have the chance for several more days, so apologies for any typos.
Thanks for reading— as always, I love hearing your thoughts!